Consumers are increasing making well-informed decisions of what product to buy beforehand by reading reviews, price comparisons and offers. But a new technology named Beacon promises to dramatically alter the shopping experience by allowing retailers to know the location of a shopper using a smartphone within a store to send relevant messages, offers and places where they might be useful.

Swirl commissioned independent research firm Research Now to study the mobile and shopping preferences of 1,000 smartphones users. The study reveals that 65% of users prefer referring to their smartphones than 38% who prefer sales associates.

Some of the other findings of the survey are:

1) Smartphone users like receiving alerts on new products. For time or location sensitive messages mobile is the way to go for both retailers and consumers. At least 67% users received push alerts on their smartphones in the past six months. Out of these at least 81% read or open these alerts most of the time and 79% have made at least one purchase.

2) The retailer must ensure the content is useful and relevant to the customer’s requirements. When asked what caused customers to ignore notifications 41% said the data was irrelevant, while 37%said there was not enough value provided in the offers.16% said the ads were basically annoying while 6%did not opt in to receive them.

3) Smartphone users are vary of sharing their phones location as privacy remain a major issue however the good news is 77% of consumers were willing to disclose their location as long as they received enough value in return.

Customers are more likely to share their location with their favorite retailer (65%), proving that retailers have the advantage of trust over online stores. In contrast only 42%would trust a shopping or deals app, while 42% would trust Google and 37% would trust apps like Facebook or twitter. Maintaining such trust is necessary in a world where customer permission for location sharing can be a valuable source of information.

4) For retailers looking to engage customers and increase activity in their mobile apps, 80% customers would use their apps if it offer sales and promotional alerts. 62% users would use the retailer’s app in store if the content offered was more relevant to their interests and location.

Here are some suggestions offered by consumers on how retailers can take advantage of smartphones to deliver amazing and relevant content in a new study by latitude.

The retailers are also looking for different ways to attract customers through the smartphone medium.

The message here for retailers is that in 2014 the customer is ready to interact with retailer through a smartphone but to succeed and build brand loyalty the retailer must create an experience that engages and truly adds value to the shopper. The technology is available and customers are ready for an awesome shopping experience. It’s up to the retailers to make it a reality.